With wellness at its roots, Adam’s Chocolate hits natural sweet spot

Aiding digestion, encouraging weight loss and giving Adam’s Chocolate its unique flavour profile and velvety fudge-like texture, yacon is a natural sweetener that is bringing a new dimension to raw chocolate. A syrup derived from the roots of the yacon plant, which is a member of the sunflower family and native to Peru, this ground-breaking sweetener is low in calories, packed with antioxidants and is the lowest scoring natural sugar on the glycemic index, scoring between 1 and 5, meaning it won’t cause a sharp rise or fall in blood sugar levels.

Discovered by head chef, Adam Farag, while exploring the potential of food to overcome health issues over ten years ago, yacon has become a cornerstone of Adam’s Chocolate’s brand since Adam became the first chocolatier to master the marriage of this syrup with the rare criollo tree’s precious bounty, cacao. Processed at a low temperature to retain more of its nutrients than any other natural sugar, yacon has a subtle pear-like sweetness which allows the natural flavours of this Soil Association and Vegan Society certified cold pressed chocolate to shine through.

Combined with the other ‘Lost Crops of the Incas’, lucuma and maca, which have been consumed for their medicinal properties for thousands of years, along with colourful superfoods which are woven into the raw cacao to create flavours such as Goji Berry and Pistachio and the Great Taste award-winning Mint, each cube of Adam’s Chocolate contains a healthy dose of magnesium, copper, zinc, manganese, phosphorous and potassium, as well as 17 amino acids, including all nine essential amino acids.

Launching their new look packs last month, following a year of support from The Seed Fund after taking the philanthropic organisation’s top prize in 2016, Adam and co-owner, Mark Claydon, have even have found time to grow their own yacon for the past three seasons. Standing up to two metres tall in their back gardens, as it stores nutrients inside its tubers under the soil in preparation for winter, this Peruvian plant has laid down strong roots in the South West.

Each 82g resealable pouch of Adam’s Organic Cold Pressed Chocolate is available from independent grocery stores and health food retailers in the South West, as well as online at www.adamschocolates.com,  RRP £5.75.